Conjunction
by allan
Summary: Hero and horror, sides of a coin. (best read after 'Red Tides')


     A figure sits in the gloom, moonbeams slip through bars and catch a cold glitter in the air.  Again, like a jumping fish, the scales shine and fall.  The man studies the cast and throws again.  He follows the spin; moonbeams silhouette his upraised face, a good face.  He stares at the coin as it settles; a freshly minted dollar, but deeply scarred across the face.

     At a footfall in the corridor, his head swivels round into the light.  Well might the casual observer start; half the face is like a wax doll left too close to the fire, Jekyll and Hyde simultaneously in the one body.  The tread is familiar and one face splits in a travesty of a smile--it isn't nice.

     Bolts slide back, and a burly attendant enters.  "Heads up,

 Harvey," he growls.  "It's your new therapist."  Therapists don't last long with Harvey, they start seeing faces in their dreams.

     A hunched, bulky man shuffles in and takes a seat.  He fiddles nervously with his full beard as the attendant leaves.    "Mr. Dent," he says politely.  "I've come here because I hope we might be able to help each other."

     "That's not what the toss says, Batman."  Harvey indicates the defaced coin looking up at them from the table.  "You should know you can't fool Two-Face with disguises."

     Hands shoot out from behind the beard and snatch his coin.  Thick calloused fingers fold it up like a fortune cookie, hiding the ruined face.  

     "Harvey, when we are hurt, we change. Terrible hurt can force us to become the opposite of what we ever hoped."  His hands grip the table till the wood creaks.  "I've changed too, Harvey.  The Joker changed me, changed Catwoman."

     Harvey snarls.  "I seen the Joker got rung a few changes.  Was that your idea of help?"

     The Joker doesn't need his favourite straight-jacket anymore--anymore than your average turnip.  His Smilex nose filters spared his miserable life from the contents of my emergency tooth, those and his preternaturally fast reactions.  The convulsive jerk that saved him didn't spare me from his knife.  Even Alfred's best surgical skills and the most advanced medical equipment can't regenerate severed nerves--not there.  Now the Joker giggles and smiles innocent as a newborn while he's washed and changed; that last joke was the best.  

     "It helped his next victims, Harvey, but I don't suppose you'd care.  There was a time when you would."  He looks at Harvey, trying to catch some trace of the crusading district attorney he once knew--but a monster glares back.  Harvey only knows Batman, he can't see the old friend. He can't even see the monster looking back.

     "Yeah, there was a time you wouldn't have done that either, not even to him," Harvey mutters.  "Maybe you have changed, but you're not one of us yet, funny-ears."

     No, Batman thinks. Not yet, but oh-so close.  He knew Gordon's position; the commissioner received the hospital reports, heard the hysterical confessions tapes.  Batman thought Gordon should be pleased.  Sex-crimes alone were way down.  He recalled the pusher with AIDS; liked young boys who liked junk, and infected them freely with both.  Insert a bad-designer drug into his private stash--instant living statue.  His art statement was on permanent life-support in Gotham General.

     "Gordon has given up on me.  This disguise wasn't to fool you."  Batman smiled wryly, remembering the police commissioner's parting words.  "Gordon sees too much of me in you, maybe he's right."

     "I'm nothing like you," Harvey shouts, "and I'll kill you yet."  He snatches up the coin, even his good side going purple with the effort to straighten it.  "Hate's all I've got to live for."

     Ah yes, hate, Batman thinks wistfully.  She sings so high and clear, almost a scream.  That, and what evil men gasp in their extremity--night songs.

     "Harvey," he continues.  "Two weeks ago a man very nearly died.  He'd been impaled on a broken-off parking meter.  He is afraid to identify his assailant, but even more afraid to rape and mutilate little girls--even if that were still possible."  He smiles, showing reinforced teeth. 

     One of Bad Vlad's more effective terror tactics, Batman recalls, wonder if Harvey is getting the point?

     "You don't scare me," Harvey grunts, but he's thinking of the Joker.

     "I'm not trying to intimidate you, Harvey.  I'm attempting to share an affinity," Batman whispers.  "You don't know how hard it is for me to show--you of all people--this side of the mask."

     That gets Two-Face's attention, dualities are his vice.  Batman bends even closer.

     "He was like a Victorian stick-puppet, didn't have the sense not to struggle, not to tear and slip.  He liked it best when kids would beg and struggle--it made it more exciting, more intense."  

     For a moment, they lock eyes, make real contact.  

     "You know, it's true.  It is more exciting."

     Harvey chuckles, he likes that.  "The Penguin owes me a carton.  Birdbrain didn't believe you could do it--said you were too much of a gentleman."  He strokes an acid-ravaged face.  "But perhaps I've actually underestimated you.  You won't need a disguise for Arkham next time; you'll be a genuine admission."

     Gordon had hinted as much to Batman after the business with Captain Murphy.  Harvey had always been trying to nail him while District Attorney.  Murphy was in a pimp's pocket.  The up-market slick catering to special and expensive tastes had been paying him off in cash and kind for years.  It was the cash that got him.  Freshly picked-up envelope of C-notes stuffed in his hip pocket, as usual.  Hard to reach while belted-in behind the wheel out on a busy freeway.  Phosphorus burns to the bone, never mind soft tissues, urine doesn't quite quench it.  Gordon had failed to see the humour, however he wasn't driving right behind Murphy at the time.

     Batman tells the story to Harvey, even mimicking Murphy thrashing around in the car before it rolled.  Harvey laughs.  He hasn't laughed so well in years, not on both sides of his face at once.  Batman laughs too, it feels good to share a joke with an old friend.  Gordon doesn't call anymore.

     Batman subsides.  "So, now I'm a criminal too.  I always was a dangerous psychotic--didn't I break your jaw last time?"

     Harvey winces at the memory.  "And my arm the time before that.  Still, I winged you with the Uzi.  You take such crazy risks, always playing to the gallery."

     Batman smiles thinly, he had been a most ardent suitor of Death, yet ever she plays the coquette.  She could afford patience; eventually everybody dies.

     "Stakes have moved higher, Harvey.  Ask the Joker."  Batman reaches over and grabs his hand, the ruined one.  "He nearly died.  I don't want you on my conscience."

     Harvey tries to jerk away his hand, it doesn't move.  After a while, Batman releases the hand and gazes down at his own.  He makes a last try.

     "Wayne Chemicals will pay for your face and hand to be made whole again," he offers.  "It will be very slow and painful, but it can be done."

     Harvey touches his face and smiles crookedly.  "A new face! Oh, you shouldn't.  But which side?"  Hands cover one face then the other.  He peaks through laced fingers.  "Do you remember the Siamese twins?  The one I tortured, he was the good one."

     Oh, Harvey, thinks Batman.  Most of the maniacs I've put in Arkham were once regular folk who suffered unbearable physical and emotional trauma.  Bizarre acts of cruelty became all they could feel, they made an art form of it.  We've all made a spectacle of ourselves.

     "Did you ever think, Batman," Harvey insinuates into the silence.  "Just what you would do without us?  Know what?  I don't even think you're much of a therapist.  My last one told me it was a symbiotic relationship; that guys like me and the Joker were your proxy/rivals--targets for your arrows of desire."

     He holds out a hand that would scare a leper.  "I don't want a new face, cape-boy.  I know who I am, and you owe me a buck."

     Batman moves his hand.  A newly-minted dollar piece lies on the table.  Harvey snatches at it like a junky.

     Batman takes a last look as the attendant closes the steel door.  Harvey is staring hard at the face of the coin, and Batman knows what he's thinking.  He's not allowed sharp objects, but he has to slash that face. 

     I wish you well, thinks Batman.  That is a very special alloy.  I've been using it for target practice--not a mark.  It will make you very angry and it will keep you alive.  Everybody needs a little challenge in their life.

     He passes the Joker's room.  The permanent clown-face has been propped up facing the door, and his eyes follow Batman.  Take more than a whiff of gas to bind that demon, thought Batman and shuddered.  Another day when the flesh is less weak, Joker, another day...if we're lucky.

     Driving later through the East Side docks, Batman parks and pulls off the disguise.  His costume is underneath and the new alloy breastplate is uncomfortable.  He puts on the hood that is more a helmet and attaches a cape that will absorb a flame-thrower blast, or any ordinance the police or criminals are likely to get their hands on.

     Poor Gordon, he muses.  Demons stalk Gotham.  Some live off the blood of innocents; some, the guilty.

     The river racks a higher ring of scum on the rotten pilings. The incoming tide displaces wharf rats that scurry and squeal. Batman is looking forward to the night; she is always so...generous.

     How pathetic poor Harvey looked, hunched over his fetish. Batman thinks.  I can even feel sorry for the Joker.  Yet they do not deserve my pity, for they were weak.  He touches his gas tooth for luck, and slips into the waiting shadows.  

     I'm not afraid of Gordon, or Arkham.  Batman chuckles to himself.  Never take me alive.


End file.
